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I misremembered that the TOP RATE was returned, for all the rates being returned, to the Clinton era rates. I regret my error, and also state a LOT of tax raising was still in the SB plan. Not only putting up the top bracket to Clinton's top rate, but taxing dividends and cap gains at that same elevated rate. (To be fair to myself, David Stockman and probably Alice Rivlin as well did call for returning all income brackets to the Clinton era rates, again iirc.)

And while you’re reading this list, remember: Simpson-Bowles is a centrist proposal.

1) Simpson-Bowles ends the the Bush tax cuts for income over $250,000. And note that they do that before they reform the tax code. The expiration of the tax cuts is built into their baseline. That way, their reform of the tax code starts from a revenue level that includes the revenue from those upper-income Bush tax cuts.

2) There are a lot of tax increases in Simpson-Bowles. $2.6 trillion over 10 years, to be exact. That’s more than President Obama ever proposed. It’s way more than the Republicans have ever proposed. It’s $1.8 trillion more than in the “Bowles plan” that Boehner is proposing. Think about that: To follow the Simpson-Bowles recommendation on taxes, you’d have to take the $800 billion Boehner is proposing and then raise taxes by more than the $1.6 trillion Obama is asking for.

3) There are so many tax increases that the plan is nearly 1:1. According to CBPP’s calculations, Simpson-Bowles includes $2.9 trillion in spending cuts and $2.6 trillion in tax increases. That’s 1.1:1. If you add the $800 billion in projected interest savings to the spending side, then it’s 1.4:1.

4) Simpson-Bowles taxes capital gains and dividends as normal income. The key difference between Simpson-Bowles-style tax reform and the tax reform plans we heard about through the election is that S-B eliminates the preferential rate on capital gains and dividend income. That amounts to a huge tax increase on the rich, and it’s how S-B manages to lower rates while raising revenue and retaining progressivity.

5) Charities, homes, health care and states. Simpson-Bowles turns the deductions for charitable contribution and mortgage interest into 12 percent, non-refundable tax credits. It caps the tax exclusion for employer-provided health care and then phases it out entirely by 2038. It eliminates the exemption for state and local bonds.

6) Simpson-Bowles raises the gas tax by 15 cents. Just saying.

7) Congress has already passed 70 percent of the discretionary cuts. Under the Budget Control Act, discretionary spending will be $1.5 trillion lower from 2013 to 2022 than was projected in the Congressional Budget Office’s 2010 baseliner. That means that 70 percent of S-B’s cuts to discretionary spending are done.

8) Simpson-Bowles cuts security spending by $1.4 trillion, not including drawing down the wars. That’s far deeper than what’s in the law now, far deeper than anything the White House or the Republicans have proposed, and deeper, I believe, than the sequester cuts that so many think would devastate the military.

9) The Social Security changes. Simpson-Bowles makes three main changes to Social Security. It increases the taxable maximum on income to 90 percent of all income, which raises $238 billion over the next decade. It uses a different measure of inflation to slow cost-of-living adjustments. It raises the retirement age to 68 in 2050 and 69 in 2075.

10) Paul Ryan voted against Simpson-Bowles. And so, for the record, did Dave Camp and Jeb Hensarling, the other two House Republicans on the commission. Of the House Democrats, John Spratt voted for the proposal, and Xavier Becerra and Jan Schakowsky voted against. Among the senators, it was just the reverse: All three Republicans (Tom Coburn, Judd Gregg, and Mike Crapo) voted for it, as did two of the three Democrats (Dick Durbin and Kent Conrd). Max Baucus voted against it.

11) Simpson-Bowles went down in the House, 382-38. In March, Reps. Jim Cooper and Steve LaTourette brought a modified version of Simpson-Bowles to the floor. This incarnation of the proposal was actually quite a bit to the right of the original, including smaller tax increases and defense cuts. It failed, and failed big.

These 11 facts should shed light on a couple of Washington’s enduring mysteries.

First, it should be fairly clear why the White House figured Simpson-Bowles was a nonstarter. They thought that if they endorsed it, Republicans would oppose it en masse, and hang every unpopular tax increase and spending cut around the White House’s neck. In retrospect, I think the White House miscalculated here, but it’s easy to see why they made the decision they did. The proposal the White House ultimately released included far fewer tax increases and security spending cuts than Simpson-Bowles.

Second, as popular as Simpson-Bowles is among the CEO community, and on Wall Street, most of those folks don’t know what’s in it. Wall Street doesn’t tend to be hugely supportive of taxing capital gains as normal income, for instance.

Third, Republicans may want to associate themselves with Erskine Bowles, and they may want to attack Obama for not doing enough to support Simpson-Bowles, but they want nothing to do with Simpson-Bowles itself. After all, Boehner could have endorsed the Simpson-Bowles plan rather than the “Bowles plan,” and that would have won him huge plaudits in the media, and many more friends in the CEO and Wall Street communities, at least at first. But he didn’t, and, from his perspective, for good reason.

What a churlish response to my 'Right you are!' admission, complete with the well-known international icon for 'beaten'-- taking the boxing glove to the face! (I made that part up, but about the well-known international icon. As a joke. I mention that explicitly 'cause you appear unable to understand things.)

Explaining my faulty memory isn't stating I was right-- it's explaining how or why I posted the wrong information.

You are unable to process written information well. Do you do any better with verbal communications?

What a churlish response to my 'Right you are!' admission, complete with the well-known international icon for 'beaten'-- taking the boxing glove to the face! (I made that part up, but about the well-known international icon. As a joke. I mention that explicitly 'cause you appear unable to understand things.)

Explaining my faulty memory isn't stating I was right-- it's explaining how or why I posted the wrong information.

You are unable to process written information well. Do you do any better with verbal communications?

Brother wilson seems deeply disturbed these days. His grammar and syntax seem way out of kilter which are often symptoms of a deeply disturbed
mind yet he doesn't even seem to notice.
I used to try and help him with his spelling and composition but there are so many in each posting these days that I'm afraid it's beyond my energy level.
Even Sev is more coherent. I fear that the johnny persona is starting to swallow the larry persona and we all know how that would end.
Of course I no longer read johnny/larry's posts. johnny larry is permanently banned by me and larry johnny has been suspended until
the 10th or 12 at which time I will re-evaluate larry johnny.
If he has settled down by then I may re-instate him on a purely probationary status , of course.

There have been several dembot threads about how they simply adore SB ... and I assume there will be more ... followed by showing them that they hadn't a clue.

The same thing applied to decades of the left bleating about how we should have followed the Carter energy plan ... hich I agree we should have ... followed by them recoiling in horror when they learn the plan was drill everywhere and burn more coal.

If allegedly 'dembot' threads praised SB, then they were not much in the way of liberals. The liberal or further left take on SB was to call it the 'cat-food commission,' implying its implementation if passed will beggar seniors and have them eating cat food to be able to even attempt to afford other living expenses.

I think many on the left would support raising the preferred income tax rate on dividend, interest and cap gains to the normal income tax rate. They'd also like raising the cap on SS taxation to cover 90% of all income. But equally, they'd oppose changing the cpi calculation (lowering it), or raising the eligibility age for SS by two years (it's already in law to go to 67), or eliminating tax exclusion treatment for state bond interest payments, health care costs to employers, and etc.

The lengthy quote was to show why SB is NOT supported by the GOP, and they are wholly non-serious when they complain why didn't the president support 'his own commission's findings'? Because they had no ratified findings (failing to achieve the required votes to recommend anything), for starters, and because the GOP House types would have moved heaven and earth in opposition.